Tuesday, September 17, 2019

The Trump Administration Expands ‘Remain In Mexico’ Program For Asylum Seekers

The Trump administration is expanding the “Remain in Mexico” program by opening up two temporary tent facilities in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas.

Federal immigration authorities have erected two temporary tent facilities in Texas to help manage the onslaught of asylum applicants appearing at the U.S-Mexico border. The Laredo location officially opened on Wednesday, and Brownsville’s first hearing took place on Thursday. The two camps will start small, only conducting a handful of hearings a week, but plan on being “fully engaged” in roughly two weeks’ time, according to the Justice Department.

The new camps pertain to the administration’s Remain in Mexico program, typically referred to as the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) by the U.S. government. Implemented in January, MPP is a policy that requires foreign nationals who reached the U.S. through Mexico to return and wait in Mexico for the duration of their court proceedings. Such a system has given relief to the U.S. immigration court system, which has been inundated by a flood of illegal aliens requesting asylum at the southern border.

The federal government used only two immigration courts in San Diego and El Paso to process asylum claims. However, as the program expanded across the border, there was a need to construct immigration courts farther east into Texas. After studying where there are large areas of immigration flows, officials decided to establish camps in Laredo and Brownsville.

The “soft-sided” hearing structures are a temporary setup allowing aliens to process their claims by judges via VTC video conference. In Laredo, for example, there are 18 hearing rooms, with each room supplied with “state-of-the-art” VTC equipment. Brownsville, a much larger establishments, has 66 rooms. Judges from the interior of the country can video conference in and hear asylum cases from migrants at the southern border. The facilities also include waiting rooms for public attorneys and witnesses, and special waiting rooms for attorneys to meet with clients.